Thursday, April 28, 2011

Acrobat 8, 9, and X compared

I'm often asked "what's new in Acrobat X, and should I upgrade?" Rick Borstein has put together a comprehensive comparison chart showing what's new in the 8, 9, and X versions here. Thanks Rick!

Keep in mind that Acrobat X is included in the new Creative Suite 5.5 upgrade, as a standalone product in Pro (Mac or Windows) or Standard (Windows only) versions, or in a Suite version of its own, the Acrobat X Suite.

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Selecting objects behind other objects in Illustrator

Illustrator CS5 offers a new, simplified way to select an object that is behind, or underneath, another object. Just hold down command (Mac) or ctrl (Windows) and click repeatedly on the top object until the object behind is selected. This is a nice addition to Illustrator CS5 because InDesign has had this feature for many years.

Along with this new feature comes a new preference setting that could trip you up someday. Preferences > Selection and Anchor Display has an option to disable this shortcut. So, if you want to be able to use this, be sure that "Command Click to Select Objects Behind" is selected.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Free May issue of Wired for the iPad

Adobe has sponsored the May 2011 issue of Wired magazine for the iPad, so you can download the May issue free through mid-May. As an early adopter of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Wired keeps pushing the boundaries of what can be done with this new software suite.

Just download the Wired app, and then launch it on your iPad. You will see a list of all the issues available to purchase, and you will see the May issue listed as free.

See the Adobe Digital Publishing blog for more info.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

2 new iPad apps

I'm thrilled to announce two iPad apps that I've been heavily involved with as a developer have finally made it to the App store. Both of these FREE apps were created with Adobe InDesign CS5 and the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.

Lynn Phelps was the Art Director responsible for the beautiful layouts of both of these apps. I did the technical production, interactive elements, and application development.

Paul Crosby, Architecture In Sight is a showcase of the work of architectural photographer Paul Crosby, presented in "coffee table book" format. For this application, we elected to keep it simple, and let the amazing photography speak for itself, so there is limited interactivity.

The Minnesota Conservation Volunteer magazine Sense of Place issue is a special iPad edition of Vol. 73, No. 433 of this wonderful magazine. The iPad edition is jam-packed with bonus content: literally hundreds of beautiful nature photographs from well-known photographers such as Jim Brandenburg, Layne Kennedy and Richard Hamilton Smith; bird calls from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and many interactive elements.

See the Digital Publishing Gallery for a list of the 230+ apps that have been created to date using the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite.

Contact me if you have content that you want to publish to the iPad, Android tablets, or the Blackberry Playbook. I can show you how to do this yourself...or, if you prefer, I can manage some or all of the production.

Monday, April 11, 2011

CS5.5 announced

Today Adobe announced Creative Suite 5.5. If you'll recall, CS 5 was announced April 12, 2010 and began shipping on April 30, 2010. Adobe has indicated that their intent is to ship a new version of the Creative Suite every 2 years, with a mid-cycle "dot release" to address current technology changes and trends.

See Adobe.com and Adobe TV for a good overview of the new features and capabilities suite-wide. See InDesignSecrets for a good rundown of the new features in InDesign CS 5.5.

Bottom line: The update contains Acrobat X, changes to InDesign, InCopy, Flash Catalyst, Flash Professional, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Audition, Device Central, and Media Encoder, as well as a new (optional) subscription pricing model, and integration of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Note specifically that this update doesn't add any new features to Illustrator or Photoshop.

Friday, April 08, 2011

How to batch print PDF files

Say you've got a bunch of PDF files that you want to print in alphabetical order. Windows Explorer allows you to select multiple PDF files, right-click and choose Print. Unfortunately, this command seems to print the files in a random order, not alphabetically. On the Mac, I don't know of a similar command in the Finder.

Fortunately, there is another way. Just follow the steps below.

Acrobat 9

1. Run Adobe Acrobat 9

2. Choose Advanced > Document Processing > Batch Processing

3. Select Print All and then click the Run Sequence button

4. Click the OK button in the Run Sequence Confirmation dialog box

5. Navigate to the folder containing your PDF files, and open the folder. Click on the first PDF file you want to print, hold down the Shift key, and select the last PDF file. Then click the Select button.

Acrobat X

Acrobat X replaces "Sequences" with "Actions", and unfortunately doesn't include a built-in "Print All" Action. So you will need to create one.

1. Choose File > Action Wizard > Create New Action

2. Fill in the "Create New Action" dialog box as shown below.

3. Click the Save button.

4. Give the Action a name, such as "Print" and click the Save button.

5. Now each time you want to batch print PDF files with Acrobat X, just File > Action Wizard > Print, and follow the on-screen prompts.